Tomorrow
by nanjarohoihoi
Summary: A missing scene from the second episode, "Fade to Black", in which Dillon considers breaking out of prison at night. Dillon & Ziggy friendship.


**Tomorrow**

Dillon fiddled with the bars of their prison cell as an inmate walked by escorted by two guards. The moment the inmate spotted Ziggy, he snarled, "Ziggy! You little punk! Once I get my hands on you, you'll wish you were never born!" As the guards forcibly dragged him away, the inmate kicked his heels into the ground and continued to shout death threats until he was out of earshot.

From his perch on the top bunk, Ziggy frowned. "Isn't it, like, a UN human rights violation to be threatened in prison?" He paused as though in thought, his eyebrows furrowing before continuing. "I mean, not that there's a UN to violate anymore."

Dillon had figured out pretty quickly that Ziggy liked to ramble. Still, for as much as he talked about himself, Dillon had no clue why so many of the inmates seemed to want Ziggy's head on a platter.

"You know," Ziggy pointed out, his legs swigging in the air below the edge of bunk, "Neither of us got a fair trial either. Well actually, we didn't get any trial." He slapped his chest with a fist, cleared his throat loudly, and then shouted, "Hey! Hey! Guards!" Their corner of the prison was silent in reply. "For the record, you didn't give us a fair trial!"

Ziggy dropped his voice back to a slightly less ear-splitting volume and said, "This reminds me of a time in middle school. There was this giant-"

Dillon wasn't ignoring Ziggy. He was, in fact, half listening to the seemingly endless torrent of words coming out of Ziggy's mouth while he thought about the best way to escape from Corinth's penitentiary. He knew it would be easier to break out on his own, but when he had mentioned it earlier, Ziggy had used the plural "we".

_"When are we gonna bust out of this can?"_

_"We?" Dillon had asked._

_"Yeah," Ziggy had replied automatically. "You. Me. We."_

Ziggy had made it clear that if Dillon was going to leave, Ziggy wanted to come with him.

"-and that's when I got locked in the change room. Luckily I was able to use my resourcefulness to locate an umbrella and a bobby pin-"

Dillon didn't consider Ziggy a friend, but Ziggy did get him to Corinth, and he owed the boy something for that. Dillon wasn't sure he would be able, in good conscience, to leave him behind in a prison filled with people who clearly wanted him dead. That being said, Dillon wasn't sure if he was willing to take Ziggy with him either.

"-it was hilarious!" Dillon glanced up and caught Ziggy's eye. "Okay, okay," Ziggy said, reading something in Dillon's expression. "Maybe you had to have been there. But I will always remember that day as the only time I triumphantly defeated the entire synchronized swimming team."

Dillon raised an eyebrow, and Ziggy seemed about to continue to elaborate on what he obviously felt was an epic narrative, when a guard shouted, "Lights out!"

Ziggy flopped onto his mattress and asked, "When they say 'lights out', do they mean that it'll be pitch black or that they'll only turn off the overhead light?"

The lights went out abruptly as Dillon lay down on the bottom bunk, and then Ziggy answered his own question. "Hey, it's not completely pitch black. It's just mostly black. What do you call it when it's dark, but not really pitch black? Dark black?"

"Does it matter?" Dillon asked, slightly amused in spite of himself.

"No, not really," Ziggy admitted. "I'm just curious." Dillon heard him sigh. "It's such a shame. If there was more light, I could've shown you my most fabulous shadow puppet."

Dillon had never heard anyone call a shadow puppet "fabulous" before. Then again, Ziggy had called his shadow puppets "brilliant" earlier. "And what would that be?"

"A vampire rabbit," Ziggy replied, tone completely serious.

Dillon felt the corners of his lips quirk upward. "A vampire rabbit?" Half of the things Ziggy said were absolutely ridiculous.

"It has sharp fangs and everything." Ziggy made a noise reminiscent of the engine of a race car that Dillon supposed was intended to be the sound that blood-sucking rabbits made, and then fell silent.

The silence stretched on for a few minutes. When Dillon thought that Ziggy might actually be trying to sleep, Ziggy asked, in a voice that had lost some of its earlier energy, "You're not planning to break out in the middle of the night, are you?"

Dillon closed his eyes and after a moment of consideration, decided to tell the truth. "I haven't decided yet."

"Oh," Ziggy said. Dillon heard him shift in the bed above him and then yawn. "Wake me up if you decide to."

Ziggy hadn't asked Dillon to take him along. He had assumed that Dillon wouldn't leave without him, and that gave Dillon pause.

Ziggy was the only person in Corinth who hadn't been suspicious of him. Sure, when they were first arrested, Ziggy had denied knowing Dillon, but Dillon recognized that Ziggy had said those things to protect himself - that Ziggy's words were a self-defense mechanism. Understandable really.

Dillon stretched out on his back while he waited for Ziggy's breathing to even out. When he was sure that Ziggy was asleep, he swung his legs over the side of his bunk and made to stand. As he moved, something brushed against his shoulder and his reflexes kicked in automatically. He reached out to catch whatever he had felt.

He realized, belatedly, that it was Ziggy's wrist. Even in the poor illumination, Dillon could make out Ziggy's right arm hanging off the side of the top bunk. It dangled between Dillon and the cell door.

Dillon hesitated and, once again, debated leaving. He knew that there was someone out there who needed him, and that there was no way he was going to locate her if he was stuck locked behind bars, but then Ziggy mumbled something in his sleep and Dillon wondered if maybe Ziggy needed him too. He released his grip on Ziggy's wrist and, a moment later, Ziggy's sleep-heavy voice asked, "You're not breaking out without me, are you?"

"No." The answer came to Dillon so quickly that the moment it left his mouth, he was surprised he debated the decision at all. He wasn't going anywhere. At least, not yet.

Ziggy shifted, his arm disappearing from Dillon's view. "Good. Because tomorrow I'm going to show you more of my shadow puppets. I promise you, they're magnificent."

"Magnificent?" Dillon rolled his eyes and made himself comfortable on his bunk. "Go to back to sleep, Ziggy."

"Magnificent," Ziggy mumbled softly, the end of the word almost entirely lost in a yawn.

Dillon shook his head at Ziggy's absurdity. Then he looked towards the bars and thought about taking on Corinth's defense forces single-handedly. He could do it, and he would do it, but maybe, for the time being, he was more interested in discovering what other ridiculous adjectives Ziggy would use to describe his shadow puppets in the morning.


End file.
